在实验室里制造生命——人工生命的替代性研究进路综述

Create Living Being in the Lab:Alternative Approaches of Artificial Living Being

生命的本质为自我同一性,也就是说生命生存的目的在于自身而不是为了外在的目的。生命的自我同一性与生命逻辑,即自我指称,是一致的。生命在本质上是多层次的自指结构,这种多层次的自指结构如何可能,马图拉纳和瓦雷拉的自创生理论在概念上进行了澄清。基于冯·诺依曼的元胞自动机的人工生命方兴未艾,其本质为计算主义。化学进路的超循环论和繁殖组织则试图从自催化出发来研究生命的自指结构。当前最富有前景的人工生命理论模型迪肯提出的自生胞理论,但距离真正的在实验室里制造生命还有相当远的距离。

The nature of life is self-identity,namely,living beings exist for itself rather than purpose outside. The self-identity of living being is consistent with the logic of living which is self-reference.Essentially,living being is a system with hierarchically self-referential structure. The theory of autipoiesis,constructed by Maturana and Varela,articulates the conceptual meaning of the possibility of this self-referential structure. A-Life is a fast growing field to study artificial life from the perspective of the computation of living being originating from von Neumann and Ulam’s automata theory. Hypercycle theory and propagating organization theory try to study the artificial life in terms of autocatalytic chemistry. The most promising theoretical model of artificial life for now is autogenesis,formulated by Terrence Deacon,though still far from being realized.